Nautica Italiana leaves Confindustria

Fifteen big brands of the Italian nautical industry (among which Ferretti Group, Baglietto, Azimut-Benetti, Perini, Mondomarine) belonging to Nautica Italiana definitively left Confindustria. The groups leaving are the same which had left UCINA Confindustria Nautica, withoutleaving Confindustria.
This choice “has been well weighted, and at the point where we had gotten, it couldn’t be delayed anymore”, commented Alberto Galassi, Managing Director of the Ferretti Group.
“As Association Nautica Italiana, we had asked to gather the Italian nautical industry under a common sector of Confindustria, creating an internal federation together with UCINA. For the past eight months we have been waiting for an answer: bureaucratic slowness, no answers, delays. At this point we had had enough: the field in which we operate has certain times and modes, very different from the in some way medieval ones that mark this Confindustria. It is not only slow, it is completely static. In eight months, one cannot be unable to lift a reservation.”
Confindustria and UCINA stand up for themselves saying in a memo that they “could not admit Nautica Italiana, too, because we have two associations for the same sector and, by the way, the representativeness of the nautical industry is still ours.”
UCINA’s President Carla Demaria commented: “This is truly a surreal and over the line break-up that will damage the whole nautical sector of our country.” And, to the accusations of not being open to innovation, not giving enough attention to the small businesses and of producing doubtful balance sheets, Demaria answered saying that there are “elements of obvious falsity with aggressive and violent words”.
The current management of the nautical industry by Confindustria, according to Galessi, is “bankrupt”. “The big brands alone give work to 4500 people. And the jobs created through the satellite activities are 15 thousand. We need to act in accordance with the needs of the market, and with the speed dictated by the Brexit or Turkey. On the contrary, Confindustria’s reaction times are medieval. And its battle is a rearguard action.” For this reason Nautica Italiana is working to reorganize a new Nautical Exposition to be set either in Tuscany or in Liguria, without excluding the creation of an event to be held in Milan, at the Fiera Milano.